The establishment and closure of the Jewish district of Warsaw¹⁰⁹² prevented
that forbidden trade. Deprived of income, large crowds of people are again
a burden for the Jewish Community and customers of the soup kitchen.
ARG I 757 a (Ring. I/9)
Description: original, typewritten with handwritten amendments, ink, Polish,
200×296 mm, 4 sheets, 4 pages. Attached are two almost identical notes by Hersh
Wasser, in Polish and Yiddish: “Provinces. Grodzisk Maz[owiecki], Warsaw
county. Chapters of the war-time history by comrade Bernard Kampelmacher.”
After July 1941, Warsaw ghetto, Bernard Kampelmacher. Study “Grodzisk
Mazowiecki. Synagoga i Bejs Hamedrosz” [Grodzisk Mazowiecki. The
synagogue and bet hamidrash].
[1] GRODZISK MAZOWIECKI
The synagogue and bet hamidrash
Approximately 90 years ago, Gutgield Lejwa, then a member of the Jewish
Community, built a large, wooden synagogue “so that people do not say that
he did any harm to the Jewish Community.” He owned the nearby forests.
As he grew rich from forest trade, he tried to obtain the best building materials
for the synagogue. Some thirty odd years later, the wife of Mąka, a rich
Grodzisk resident, wanting to thank God for giving her a son after a long period
of infertility, extended the wooden building with a brick annex for women.
From then on, the synagogue had 300 seats for men and the same number
for women on the balcony of the wooden synagogue and in the annex.
Next to the synagogue (where there are lawns today, made by order of Mayor
Borkowski for the Jews’ contribution to his election) was a wooden alms-house
with three rooms. Two shammeses lived there and there was a morgue, too.
Poor Jewish wanderers stopped on their way in that building, filling one of
its rooms, which sometimes accommodated as many as 25 people.
1092 15 November 1940.
